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Save Water, Drink Beer

With the weekend approaching, and with it payday, plenty of workers in this country will be looking to spend a little (or a lot) of their earned monies on whatever they decide. And a lot of that money is continually spent on entertainment, namely: alcohol.

Food, electricity, toothpaste and toilet paper -- all of these are necessities. And without them, one ends up in the dark, with bad breath and a smelly asshole. (You think Domino’s is still open?) But so long as there is a little wine in house, maybe a bottle of whiskey, a few cans of “bro sodas,” we are contented with our burned out light bulbs.

Of course, this doesn’t last too long. After one too many nights on the wagon, the bottles pile up, and the air around one is a prolonged scent of too-much-fun and not enough self-control. People begin to notice. When was the last time you didn’t have a drink in your hand?

Instead of turning up R. Kelly, would it be so bad to indulge in a little discipline?

Where is the fun in being sober? One might ask. And that is a hard question to answer and define when you can’t stop drinking. It becomes difficult to resort to asceticism when every weekend is spent splurging on booze, among other things….

The first line of defense against the endless benders and the money lost on them is a good group of friends. A line of support, if you will. However, this could also be contradictory, if a majority of your friends happen to be better at slugging the drink along with you. This might challenge you in ways that are opposite from being “healthy.”

What is healthy?

Most folks might not consider drinking binges and shots against your will to be all that healthy. But it is a good test of how well your liver is functioning.

“Healthy” becomes subjective, related to your habits and inherited traits. Also, the word refers to how you feel about yourself. So then, if you can drink with the best of them, and you feel great … is that not healthy?

Only on the morning after do we begin to realize just how “healthy” we are, as well as our decisions and lack of judgment or standards.

Who is this is my bed? Why does my mouth taste like 1,000 cotton balls? Where are my keys? How did we get home last night? My head is killing me. How am I missing $200 dollars?

We look for mercy on our souls. And we find that there isn’t any. Especially when we are willing to indulge in the vices so rampant and out of control in this country. But this is Freedom. So we must exercise these freedoms lest they be stolen from our lives.

We are free to be drunks. Free to use drugs. Free to get high, eat an entire box of Oreos. Free to sleep through our alarms. Free to get so obliterated that we lose our equilibrium, falling face forward onto the ground. It’s all around us. And it’s beautiful, this freedom.

As true as all this may or may not be, we are also free to learn from our mistakes, to change what seems to be wrong. If nothing feels wrong, then what? Who or what defines what is right for each of us? Certainly not the bloated and indefinable Laws of the Land that seek, more often than not, to monetarily reap from our missteps rather than to make it clear how to change for the better. Whatever that means. Some Laws are enforced while others are slightly ignored. Like our problems.

Grab a drink. Enjoy the freedom while you can.

What makes us drunks could very well be of the same fiber which entices us to drink less. It’s all relative, as Einstein so brilliantly resolved. Relative to what?

Relative to how we feel about each other and ourselves. We define what is right and what is wrong. And if drinking becomes a problem, then we are the only ones who can stop our individual plight. If drinking is a celebratory act, which helps relax and relinquish the weekly pressures and woes -- who is to say that that’s a bad thing?

Not me. I believe in the freedom to choose. And if somebody should choose to spend their money on drinks at the bar rather than invest in the newest Oncology stock… which is the least harmful? Or the money could be saved in a bank account. Tell us, O great Economists, what it means to herd our monies in our accounts while the rest of the world aches for clean water, just a bit of relief to keep themselves clean and not covered in flies.

Putting money into circulation is what keeps this economy rolling. If it’s rolling downhill, then whose fault is that?

Not the drunks. Not the people living their lives, looking to enjoy, play, participate, rejoice, gather, coming together for the sake of being a human being in a country that was overrun at its inception with booze and disease.

There is no disease without its symptoms. And the symptoms of a drunken populace are too many to name. What should be pointed out, though, is how we can control those symptoms, so as not to ruin a good time for anybody else.

Drinking is a social activity. We are social beings. If somebody should choose to be anti-social, then the least we can do is to tell them to have a glass of water before taking another shot of Fireball. Monday morning comes for us all. Let us decide for ourselves. The results might be surprising….

Like hugging strangers at the end of the night when the bar is closed and there’s no more money to spend, at least not until the next payday.